Saving Places

Saving Places

by Dave Reese
Montana Living Magazine
Published: June 01, 2004

The Ruby River Valley winds its way through southwest Montana, a wide valley dotted with ranches, barns and small towns. Driving through this area, you can feel the ghosts of the past — mining towns gone bust, ranch houses boarded up. Cows stand alone, rubbing against barbed wire fences, their dark bodies contrasting with the brown landscape. A sense of desolation, to some, may seem a lonely thing, the wide-open Montana landscape an overbearing weight that must be escaped. But others — people from out of state perhaps — find this great openness a welcome thing, a breath of relief from urban life.

It’s no secret that the Big Open is swallowing up hordes of people from around the United States. Nature abhors a vacuum. And while Montana still has the fewest people per square mile in the United States, this vacuum is becoming more and more crowded.

Several grassroots organizations like the Sierra Club and Trout Unlimite, are taking up the call to preserving Montana’s grand, wide open spaces. Even Realtors are finding that there’s more to be offered to property buyers by giving them a greater sense of openness. These groups and individuals are doing their part to make sure that Montana retains its pristine character, its natural history and a clean environment — all the attributes that brought us here and keep us here.

Along the Trail of Lewis and Clark
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their Corps of Discovery on their historic journey. The goal of the Corps was to find the shortest and and most convenient route between what was then the United States and the Pacific Ocean. For the next three years, Lewis and Clark travelled 8,000 miles over roughly 75 percent of the American continent, naming forests, rivers and mountains along the way, and identifying 178 kinds of trees and 122 animals.
The key to the Corps’ success was following and navigating the Missouri and Columbia rivers.
Lewis wrote in his journal:

“I sometimes wonder that some of canoes and pirogues are not swallowed up by means of these immense masses of earth which are eternally precipating themselves into the river. ... We have had many hair breadth escapes.”

When the expedition reached the Columbia River at the falls called the Dalles, Clark wrote about the churning water, which has now been dammed into a flaccid, flat water. He described the Columbia as: the horrid apearance of this agitated ... swelling water, boiling and whorling in every direction.”

Their mile journey brought them across vast prairies and mountain ranges, some of which remain intact to this day. Much has changed in the 200 years since then — but the Sierra Club in Montana is trying to save these historic areas along the Lewis and Clark trail.

It’s the goal of the Sierra Club to help protect roughly 200,000 acres along and near the Lewis and Clark trail in Montana. The Sierra Club has been working on a five-year project that would place these vast acreages of historic significance into federal wilderness protection or have them declared nonmotorized.

The areas that the Sierra Club hopes to have placed into federal protection are:
• 105,000 acres in the Great Burn, an area on the Montana/Idaho border
• 8,000 acres near Lewis and Clark Pass, on the Helena National Forest
• 10,000 acres in the Gates of the Mountain wilderness on the Missouri river
• 30,000 to 50,000 acres in the Pryor Mountains that the club would like to see protected as nonmotorized.

Combined, the four areas represent less than 200,000 acres, a sliver compared to the six million acres of roadless areas in Montana that are unprotected and roadless. From mining and development to motorized vehicles, threats to these areas vary, according to Bob Clark, conservation organizer for the Sierra Club in western Montana. There are mining claims in the Great Burn area on the Idaho/Montana border, as well as Lewis and Clark Pass, where the Expedition rested briefly.

Off-road vehicle use is a “real problem” in the Pryor Mountains, Clark said, and wilderness designation would ensure that these places would remain wild.

The Great Burn area sees a high amount of illegal snowmoble use and official protection would help reduce that, Clark said. The Sierra Club is also recommending that the Big Log area on the south end of the Gates of the Mountains be added to the wilderness designation.

This addition would include areas where limestone canyons open into lowland savannahs on the Missouri River.

This area was omitted from the original 28,562-acre Gates of the Mountains wilderness area established in 1964, but it was here, on July 19, 1805, that Captain Lewis wrote:

“From the singular appearance of this place I called it the gates of the rocky mountains.
“My feet is verry much brused & cut walking over the flint, & constantly stuck full Prickley pear thorns, I pulled out 17 by the light of the fire to night, Musqutors verry troublesom.”

The Corps of Discovery spent nearly a month in and along the Bitterroot Range on its way west. Christened “Travelers Rest Creek” by the explorers, Lolo Creek’s main tributary, Granite Creek headwaters’ is in the Great Burn. From snowbank camp at the southern edge of the Great Burn, Lewis wrote in his journal:

“From this mountain I could observe high ruged (sic) mountains in every direction as far as I could see.”

The Sierra Club says it will begin working with the Montana congressional delegation to get these areas put into a bill that would provide wilderness or nonmotorized protection. Clark (no relation to the explorer), said it was fitting that that the Sierra Club should choose to protect lands along the Lewis Clark trail as the bicentennial of the famous expedition is celebrated. “This isn’t your typical wilderness bill,” Clark said. “We think of this as a public -lands legacy bill.

“We thought that would be a legacy fitting of the exploration itself, so that generations beyond can appreciate the scenic vistas that the Lewis and Clark expedition experienced.”

Much of this acreage that Lewis and Clark once looked out upon has already been proposed as wilderness in existing forest plans, including the Great Burn on the Lolo National Forest. Lewis and Clark Pass is currently managed as nonmotorized and is proposed wilderness, as is Gates of the Mountains; and in the Pryor mountains there are three Bureau of Land Management study areas that comprise a bulk of the areas proposed.

“It would be nice to have those areas around for future generations,” Clark said. “It’s an opportunity to promote a conservation legacy.”

Although these areas with significance to the Lewis and Clark expedition have not made it into wilderness legislation, Clark said the national and state forest agencies that manage them already recognize the lands as “being wild and wilderness-quality lands, similar to what Lewis and Clark would have seen. They already have high value in the eyes of the agencies.”

The Sierra Club has begun a grassroots effort to get these issues into legislative form, and is gauging interest among legislators. “We don’t think there’s going to be a whole lot of opposition, given the fact the areas are for the most part protected,” Clark said.

The Pryor Mountains were not on the Lewis and Clark trail, but are named after expedition member Nathaniel Pryor. He was a member of Captain Clark’s return journey which ventured just north of these mountains in Montana in July 1806.

He veered south of the expedition and viewed what are now called the Pryor Mountains. The Pryor Mountains have a diverse range of flora, from semiarid desert and broken foothills, to limestone canyons, caves, and subalpine forests with high meadows. The area, according to the Sierra Club’s Clark, is well-known for for harboring rare plant species and was used by native Americans for sacred ceremonies, and petroglyphs remain today.

Lewis and Clark pass on the Helena National Forest has similar attributes, although they’re more in the realm of viewsheds rather than rare plants. The pass is a connection to the Scapegoat Wilderness on the Continental Divide, and there are still travois tracks near the top of the pass remaining from Indian travelers.

Standing on top of the pass, you can see to upper Alice Creek and the Continental Divide, a view that Meriwether Lewis perhaps saw on his return journey in 1806.

Travelling east on their return trip, Lewis’ party followed the Nez Perce buffalo trail along the Blackfoot River, then Alice Creek, reaching the Continental Divide at what is now called Lewis and Clark pass on July 7, 1806. In his journal, Captain Lewis noted “much sign of beaver” and rejoiced at reaching “the dividing ridge between the waters of the Columbia and Missouri rivers.”

“It’s relatively the same as what they saw,” Bob Clark said. “From a view-shed standpoint, it’s one of the most compelling of the four.”

The Great Burn area is not directly in the path of the Lewis and Clark expedition, but it’s close to the headwaters of Lolo Creek, which the party followed up and over Lolo Pass on their westward trek to find the northwest passage. The Great Burn is named after the 1910 wildfire that burned about 250,000 acres in Idaho and Montana. It is now an inventoried roadless area and is managed as wilderness in the Lolo National Forest management plan. The Great Burn area, Bob Clark said, is “really significant as far as travel routes, not just from the Lewis and Clark standpoint, but from the native Americans as well.”

The area is known to harbor a strong elk herd and has clear-running mountain streams. “It’s a phenomenal place,” Clark said. The area is still popular with the public, with recreational uses ranging from hunting and horsepacking to snowmobiling. The Idaho side of the Great Burn allows motorized recreation, while the Montana side does not.

Clark said he hopes to see more cohesion between the national forest managers in Idaho and Montana, and said the Montana forest managers are showing signs of support for maintaining the Great Burn’s pristine nature. “We’re thrilled with the Lolo National Forest’s direction on this area.”

Saving Montana Ranches
On a ranch in the Ruby River valley, old cow watering holes have been renovated into glistening trout streams teeming with wildlife. Deer bound behind hedgerows, and pheasants flush from a hunter’s pointing dog. When development occurs at ranches sold by Greg Fay, it’s usually not in the form of new homes. It’s usually in the form of more wildlife.

Fay helps property owners improve their properties with wildlife enhancements, from trout streams for spawning brown trout, to white-tailed deer habitat and pheasant grounds.

“Some of the most rewarding work is taking a tributary that is no longer functioning as a spawning stream, and seeing fish in there within a year,” Fay said. “It’s tremendously rewarding.”

As an example, one spring creek that Fay worked on in the Ruby River Valley had no brown trout spawning redds last year. This year on the private ranch there were 44 redds (spawning beds).

Fay began Fay Ranches in 1992, focusing on sales of ranch properties that catered to recreation-minded buyers. He tries to sell to buyers who are not going to subdivide the land, and to that end, he helps owners develop on-property streams and ponds that not only enhance the property’s value, they help attract songbirds, wildlife, and improve fisheries. As his business in ranch sales in Montana grew, his clients soon began asking Fay to be the quarterback on site-improvement and design — from excavating “cow-pounded” streams, to stabilizing stream banks and building fish ponds. The habitat improvements benefit species like white-tailed deer, pheasant, fish — even cattle, if that’s what the owner prefers, because cattle help maintain the quality of the grass being grown on a ranch.

“There are benefits to what we do, beyond the border of a ranch,” Fay said. There are also benefits to humans. “Keeping a ranch in agriculture is key to the community,” he said. “Ranchers are good people who care about the land."

Fay subcontracts his work to water-resource companies that help him do the actual improvements. Saving Montana ranches also means Fay helps build infrastructure at the ranches, from outbuildings to ranch houses, cabins and barns — even duck blinds and golf driving ranges. He tries to replicate original ranch structures, so the places look like they belong on the Montana landscape.

“We’re taking something and making it better,” Fay said. When building a new pond, for instance, they’ll save the sod, so that when the pond is full the landscaping around it is planted with native plants. “What we try to do is build water resources so that in one year you won’t know we’ve built it,” Fay said.
Fay encourages new owners to install conservation easements on the properties. A conservation easement means that the owner might give up the right to subdivide the property, “But the tax benefits are tremendous,” Fay said. Working through conservation organizations like the Montana Land Reliance, Fay said he has helped put “tens of thousands” of acres into conservation easements.

For a rancher to build a trout stream on their ranch may seem frivolous. But to a struggling Montana rancher, improving a stream can greatly increase the resale value of the ranch. This allows the rancher to sell the property, take the cash and often triple the cattle capacity of the next ranch he buys.

“By doing this they can expand their carrying capacity tremendously,” Fay said. For example, Fay helped a rancher in Madison County sell his 750-acre property. After improvements, and with the cash he got for the ranch, the rancher was able to buy 12,000 acres to run cattle near Forsyth, Montana.

He might have helped save that rancher from going bankrupt, and he also might have kept a Montana ranch intact — and safe from subdividing. Because of the scenic assets and recreational possibilities, subdivisions typically follow rivers. Ranches that are on rivers are susceptible to development, and Fay said there is concern among Montana ranchers to help avoid that — even if they have to sell their place. “A rancher can go out of business for a variety of reasons,” Fay said. “There can be a lot of economic pressures on them.”